


Visitor Hour

by goddamnitaisha



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-04
Updated: 2014-10-04
Packaged: 2018-02-19 20:18:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2401607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goddamnitaisha/pseuds/goddamnitaisha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-Crisis Core: While Genesis is in the hospital, General Sephiroth works twice as hard. When Sephiroth finally visits his ill friend, Genesis remarks that they've grown apart. Sephiroth insists on rekindling their friendship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Visitor Hour

"Good morning," Sephiroth walked into the hospital quarters Genesis seemed to have taken some sort of permanent residence in. Though he'd been here for a while, his clothes were still in his red sports bag. After laundry he would fold them up and put them back in place. His books still in boxes. The desk was insistently empty.  
\- "Morning, Seph."  
The General closed the door behind him and looked at Genesis. He had pushed his bed to the corner furthest from the door, and his legs were tucked under the sheets. He read, his finger toyed with the bookmark - obviously intending to close the pocket as soon as he was done reading the passage.  
"Today Lazard is going to stop by to evaluate the guppies and promote a handful to the fencing class. I haven't seen him in over a month, so I look forward to that."  
Genesis closed the[[MORE]] book. He dropped it between his knees. He stroke his fingers lovingly over the cover. "Sounds nice."  
Sephiroth remained near the door. He turned his back to the glass wall.  
\- "I slept slightly better last night."  
Sephiroth nodded. "That's good. I got the impression you have been tired this week."  
- "Maybe because I told you I haven't been sleeping well and was tired?"  
"Yes, but around that, too." The silver-haired man pulled his PHD phone from his pocket, and his thumb tapped to activate the message center. The messages of this morning popped up.

> [Good morning
> 
> [Good morning
> 
> [Shall I come over? 
> 
> [Whatever.

Sephiroth looked at the screen, then closed his phone again. "We didn't say goodnight twice in a row, which hasn't happened in a long time."  
"Well duh," Genesis said. He made a face, almost a scowl. "Besides..."  
Sephiroth wondered if he was in pain.  
- "You're hardly around any more."  
"Ain't I?" Sephiroth put the phone back in his pocket. "I will try to be online more."  
"Being online is not the same as being around," Genesis said. "You're online all the time, but we barely talk two sentences."  
- "Yes, that's true. But I visit."  
"Visit!" Genesis pushed his back against the wall. He gestured to the orange chair on Sephiroth's side of the room. "When you visit, _you just sit_ _here_ and work."   
Sephiroth looked at the plastic chair, no longer daring to take a seat. He remained standing, still like a willow, with only his silver hair moving by the air conditioning. "We... need to find a common factor, instead of both living our lives paralleled to each other. Those things used to be work and training."  
Genesis put his elbow on his knee, and rubbed his temples with his thumb and forefinger. "We've had this discussion before."  
\- "We probably did, but as the desired effect was not produced, I think we need to have it again."  
Strands of Genesis' greying hair fell of his hand.  
Sephiroth asked: "Right?"  
"To what point? Getting me aggravated again?"   
\- "Stop that. You know I'm not out to make you angry."  
\- "I know, but that is going to happen."  
- "I am addressing this topic because I _want_ to spend time with you."  
Genesis threw his hand down. "Yes, but, again, as I keep saying: I do not want trivial talk. And that is all I get whenever you're not working or writing or going places. Fuck it, not even chatting happens any more."  
"Why doesn't it?" Sephiroth became very concious of his phone in his pocket. His eyes searched the room. He found his friend's telephone on floor under the orange chair - no longer tucked under his pillow.   
"Because whenever I'm at the office, you're busy." He trailed Sephiroth's gaze and looked at his face. Their eyes met. Genesis sneered. "That's why." He threw the book on the night stand. " I don't expect you to put me before anything. But this is what's happening."  
"I do put you in front of my Angeal and Lazard and charity drinks and promotional events. I haven't done a single campaign. But I feel that whenever you get to the office, everyone is always doing everything wrong. And when you get back here, you're so tired you don't really want to talk about anything." He slowly breathed in. "So there's a side of you in my absence, too."  
- "How do you feel that, if all you say is a _welcome back_ or _I'm working on a report._ "  
Even Sephiroth could feel this wasn't a question. Genesis' voice gained an undercurrent of ice water, as if Sephiroth was putting his bare feet in a glacier stream, and the temperature hurt his skin, the soil of pebbles was unsteady, and the current pulled him along. There was nothing pleasant about his voice or his eyes.   
- "Let me tell you what I did this weekend. For the record, it's Thursday now."  
- "I felt so cripplingly lonely and with no one to talk to that I stayed in my games for two whole days."  
"I imagined you having great fun playing games," Sephiroth said. "I was working all the time and checked my phone often until the crisis board meeting sundaymorning."  
"Well _obviously_ that wasn't the case. As I've just said:" He scratched the flakes on his cheek. "Checking your internet doesn't help me much, really."  
"No, it doesn't." Sephiroth said. "But I can not tell your emotional state from the other side of the phone if you don't spell it out for me. And it makes me sad that I wasn't there."  
Genesis inspected his nails. He peeled the flaked skin away from under a nail.  
"Would it be OK if I mentions work details at you every time I want to talk?" Sephiroth slid one footbackwards over the ground, and put it against the mirror wall. He folded his arms over his chest. "Details such as...  _I finished a report,_  or _I am back from a board meeting_?"  
"See, this is why I didn't want to have this talk." Genesis threw up his hands. "I have told you before, again and again."  
He leaned forward on the bed. "If you don't talk to me to find it out. I will not say anything." He glared. "Anything at all."  
It was quiet for a while.  
The air-conditioning gave a slow, steady hum, but still the air felt suffocating. It felt electric, and smelled much too clean. A wall of heavy air hung between them. It grew thicker.  
Neither attempted to break it.  
A nurse came in. She looked at Sephiroth, who bowed his silver head away from her. She put her medical kit on the empty desk. She prepared the syringe.   
Genesis offered his arm, and she took blood. She cleaned up, and disappeared.  
Sephiroth looked up.  
Genesis looked away. He rubbed his arm. When he looked up, Sephiroth looked away. Neither said something.   
After a few more minutes, two nurses rushed in. The second one pulled and IV-drip that rattled behind her over the threshold. Genesis looked at Sephiroth as he was hooked up, and the mightiest SOLDIER in the world pressed his shoulders against the mirror wall as if he could disappear in it.  
"Careful now," a nurse said.  
The sound alarmed them both and they each clenched their teeth for being startled.  
\- "Its veins are unstable. Prick the skin that hasn't been destroyed already."  
\- "There."  
As the needle sank in, Genesis' blue eyes narrowed.  _Watch this, Sephiroth. Watch me._  
The nurses left.   
As soon as the door closed, Sephiroth began to speak. "As I said, I cannot tell your emotional state if you don't spell it out for me. Saying  _nothing_  will make my job increasingly difficult. But then this would be my guidelines, right?"  
He took a slip of paper from his pocket. "One, no cheer- up messages but listen to what you have to say. Two, no trivial conversations, but meaningful topics. Three, ask about how you feel. Four, engage in conversation and don't leave within five minutes of starting one."  
He looked up to his friend.   
Genesis pushed the IV-drip on wheels next to the night stand. "I'm _sorry_ , but yes, I expect you to open the door instead of sitting in front of it and saying, _well he'll come out if she needs me_."  
At the word 'door', a frown passed over Sephiroth's face.  
Genesis ran his hand over the bandages around his arm as he looked at his friend. "I've said all of this before."  
\- "Yes, and this is the thing I find difficult. Because I imagine us in one long continuous conversation ever since Wutai. I feel that door shouldn't be there at all." He pushed himself off the wall. "But... I'll try to knock."  
- "Yes, it's there."  
- "..."  
"And I told you why it's there," Genesis said. "But you forgot."  
- "..."  
- "And now I'm pissed and I don't want to continue this conversation."  
It felt as if there were miles between them.  
"Okay," Sephiroth said. "At least... I learnt a few things. Thank you for having this conversation with me."  
\- "What did you learn?"  
\- "The list of guidelines I mentioned before."  
Genesis grabbed the covers and pulled them away from his legs. He kicked them away. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and put his hands on either side of him. His fingers dug into the mattress. "Tell me why the door is there, Sephiroth."   
The man said nothing.  
Like the the hunting Red Devil he had once been, he never broke his staring gaze as he leaned forward. "Maybe that will help you understand."  
- "...But...-"  
- "Because until you tell me, this will keep happening because you don't understand it."  
"I don't -..." The ice water seized his chest and rose to his throat. He felt cold all over. "Why... Oh for FUCKS SAKE."  
Sephiroth threw his hand down. He walked to the chair. He sat down. He put his hands in his hair. He felt ill, brick in his stomach. "I give up," he said. "I don't know why the door is there. I don't know where it is and I don't know why it is there at all!"  
Genesis studied him.  
"And I don't dare to ask because I feel like an socially incompetent fool now. Throughout this conversation you've been sighing and answering and saying 'we talked this over already.' But I instead of complimenting my curiosity and efforts to make this friendship work, I feel like I'm being put down like the stupid _youngest_ kid who doesn't understand anything at all. It makes me feel worthless. Even though I feel like I _am_ trying!"  
He pushed his hair back with his fingers and like a puppet on a string, he raised his head. "I don't know why the door is there. I would tear it off its hinges if I could find it.".  
"It's because I expected you to remember when I first told you. And the fact that I find that you didn't adds to the issue. The door is there because you didn't _see_ me. You didn't _see_ that I was not OK. And this happened once, and it happened again." Genesis crossed his legs at the knees. "And again and again and again. And it's still happening. That's why the door is there."  
He lift his chin. A flake of skin fluttered onto his mint-coloured pyjamas. "And I will not tell you this ever again."

Sephiroth's throat was dry. "Then I'll note that down, too."  
Genesis didn't answer.   
The silver SOLDIER tried to imagine what Angeal or Lazard would say in such a conversation. "...Why are you so insistent on suffering alone?"  
- "Because I expect some people to come to me without me reaching out desperately. If no one comes to help me, I will suffer through it on my own. I always have. I always will."  
\- "Angeal-"  
\- "Do you see him? Geal isn't here. I have gone through a big part of my life without him. We aren't glued together."   
Sephiroth thought if it would help if they were.   
"I would be insisting on suffering alone if someone offered me help and I turned it down," the Red Fury continued "...but I'm still waiting for the offer. I don't insist on suffering alone. But people tend to stand in a circle around me, so I don't really have a choice do I?"  
There were so many things wrong with that train of though that Sephiroth didn't know where to start, or if he could change Genesis's mind at all. "I feel that anything I am inclined to say to counter that train of thought would end up being dismissed."  
He tried to align it all in his head: "When you are hurt , I expect you to come to me. And you expect me to come to you. So we miss each other. And you see knocking on the door as a trivial thing. And I view opening the door from your side as a trivial thing. But seeing as we both are insistent on staying on _our_ side due - whatever upbringing or personal convictions we have- something still has to change."  
Sephiroth couldn't penetrate the look on Genesis' face, so he continued: "The past few months I've tried to be there for you. My effort expressed itself by sending _good morning_ greetings and telling you about my work. I am wondering if _you_ have done anything to get closer to me, and if yes, could you give an example so I can recognize the effort and value it properly instead of taking it for granted?"  
There was a storm on Genesis' face. The blood had drained from his cheeks and his eyebrows were knitted above his furious eyes. " _Good morning_ and work-trivialities absolutely nothing. They really don't. Especially when most times I've heard that was when they were closely followed by... whatever reason you were not going to be around. I want you to ask how I am, or what's wrong and to spend that extra five minutes to wait for me to tell you before dismissing me because there is an appointment or a cadet or dinner time."  
Sephiroth lift his chin, clicking his heels together in standard SOLDIER salute, and he balled his hands to his sides, but Genesis continued: "You might think this is stupid but seeing as we've known each other for this long, I had expected this to happen by now."  
Sephiroth looked down on the sad mad creature on the bed.   
- "And yes, I did open the door."   
Genesis having his elbows placed on his knees made him look small. "I did at first  but now I don't any more. Opening that door is the farthest from trivial there is. It's essential."  
A mobile phone's Victory Theme played.   
Sephiroth caught Genesis casting an angry-hopeful look at the mobile phone under the plastic chair, but it lay still. The screen was dark.  
The General's phone buzzed in his pocket. "Lazard is here."  
Sephiroth pulled the phone from his pocket. He held it up in his hand as the ringtone played a second time. It sounded more urgent.   
"I will think about this. I will relay my thoughts about this later." Sephiroth was at the threshold. He clicked the phone open. "I will text or call you. This conversation is on pause but not on end, hello Lazard."  
  


In the evening, when Sephiroth was at his desk, finishing his reports, his phone buzzed. He reached for it, read:

> [good night.

Sephiroth put the phone down. He took up his pen.  
  
  
At 2 A.M. when a new message appeared. Sephiroth was asleep, his arms wrapped around Angeal's and Genesis's T-shirts, his back turned to the device. The message on the screen illuminated the ceiling for two seconds, then faded into darkness.

> [Don't miss me when I'm gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Written by me, with a lot of help from Dya.
> 
> The title 'Visitor Hour' is a joke: SOLDIER General/experiment Sephiroth can walk into the Shin-Ra hospital any time: he is not restricted to visiting hours.


End file.
